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Blogger given three-month sentence for contempt of court in Malaysia

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(RSF/IFEX) - 10 August 2012 - The judicial harassment of blogger Amizudin Ahmat, a member of the opposition People's Justice Party, took a new twist when High Court Judge Datin Zabariah Mohd Yusof sentenced him today to three months' imprisonment for contempt of court for breaking an order not to criticize the culture, information and communications minister, Rais Yatim.

Without going into the merits of the case, Reporters Without Borders believes these proceedings to be unacceptable and the penalty disproportionate, and that they pose a dangerous threat to freedom of expression concerning members of the government.

"Instead of judging each article at issue in a spirit of open debate and giving Amizudin Ahmat a chance to defend himself, the justice system has quite simply reduced him to silence," the press freedom organization said. "And, since he dared to express himself nonetheless, it deprived him of his freedom today. Unless the judges reconsider this decision immediately, they will be answerable for creating a serious precedent for freedom of news and information in Malaysia."

Ahmat, also known by the pen name Din Banjai, was sentenced to pay exorbitant damages for defamation and banned from publishing any further articles about the minister. Since then, he has posted 11 more articles on the subject, judged by the High Court to be defamatory.

He was found guilty of serious contempt of court and, despite his explanations, the bench ruled that the repeated nature of the offence and the language he used merited severe punishment.

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The year 2014 saw Malaysians standing up to exercise the rights guaranteed under the Federal Constitution, including freedom of expression and freedom of assembly. This continues a growing trend of facing up to state oppression. Unfortunately, this has been met with increasing repression. Malaysia has seen a concerted crackdown on the freedom of expression in the year 2014, which has escalated even further in 2015.

In scrutinising the GE13 coverage provided by the most popular and influential Malaysian media, the Watching the Watchdog media monitoring project found that different 'Language Media' (English, Bahasa Malaysia, and Mandarin) provide differential information about GE13 participants, although in all cases, they reproduce the pro-BN bias found by the Watching the Watchdog project overall

In scrutinising the GE13 coverage provided by the most popular and influential Malaysian media, the Watching the Watchdog media monitoring project found that the coverage of politicians and other individuals present within election reporting (both when mentioned and when used as sources) is heavily gender-biased towards coverage of men.

In scrutinising the GE13 coverage provided by the most popular and influential Malaysian media, the Watching the Watchdog media monitoring project found that citizens are being deprived of fair and objective information about the individual politicians who are taking part in the elections.

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